Dir: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
1972
*****
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant is the film that made me sit up and take notice and fall in love with the films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder. It takes a good script and great actors to make a film that is essentially shot in just one room feel exciting. Fassbinder really arrives with this film, so too do his regular actresses. Margit Carstensen is beautifully loathsome as Petra von Kant and Hanna Schygulla plays innocent but poisonous masterfully. Funnily enough though, it is Irm Hermann, who doesn't utter a single word throughout the whole film, that really steals the show as the silent and mistreated house-maid. The last scene is brutal and brilliant and totally captures what I love about Fassbinder's films. Melodrama doesn't get much better than this. Highly recommended.
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